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July 15th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda The Israeli authorities arrest around 700 Palestinian minors annually. Some 200 Palestinian children are arrested on a monthly basis.
Press TV has conducted an interview with Maha Rezeq, child protection advocate, to hear her opinion on this issue. The following is a rough transcription of the interview.
Press TV: Some of what we saw there, it is slightly different in Gaza. Could you explain briefly why?
Rezeq: Well the fact that the Gaza Strip is geographically isolated from the West Bank so the kind of treatment children receive there is different. Children are put under arrest on border lines and during incursions by the Israeli military but they are also banned from having family visits, they are banned from having legal rights, they are not allowed to have any representation, they are forced to sign confessions in a language they do not understand because it is mostly Hebrew.
It is the same set of violations that are breached by Israelis against the Palestinians of the West Bank are the same in the Gaza Strip but the fact that they are isolated and the fact that Israel is taking those children breaking, breaching international law by detaining them outside the Palestinian territory is a violation in itself so it is more difficult for families to have access and of course ICRC is unable to arrange those visits and they are dealing with those constraints as well.
Whilst for the West Bankers it is more of the day to day discrimination as children in Israel who still fall under the civil [law], even the settlers fall under the civil law whilst the Palestinians juvenile they have to go through military Israeli court and the law there is completely different.
Press TV: In terms of the personal impact, people separated from family you are just thinking when that happens in a completely normalized situation it is traumatic enough when it happens sometimes at the butt of the gun, I can appreciate that it is a very difficult thing indeed?
Rezeq: It is a very difficult thing for different reasons. Children are not; when they are arrested families are not immediately informed of their arrest.
Press TV: Yes, where is my son? There was a demo, he has not come home, what has happened?
Rezeq: So the basic procedure is children should be informed of their legal rights, families they should be informed also of the location and the arrest of their child, children should be accompanied by their parents throughout their arrest investigation and so on, they should be represented and they should be told their rights and then they should be presented before a judge.
But children, they wait a long time that could go up to eighty days before they could see a judge unlike children from Israel who would just maximum would be held in detention for maximum 40 days before they can see a judge.
So you can see the complete differentiation, discrimination based on race between the children under the Israeli rule.
Press TV: But aren’t charities and NGO’s working in the area concerned with this? Aren’t they taking this to a more international platform?
Rezeq: Well Human Rights organizations are very aggressive and they are very active working to highlight those issues and there are lots of reports are being launched talking about the discrimination and the treatment between children even in definition of what a child is.
Under Israeli law for an Israeli child, the minors are considered 18 and under but while for the Palestinians after 16 they are not considered minors.
So all the rules of adults are applied to them and they are not even held in child detention centers, they are held throughout the detention and imprisonment with adults and that is also a breach of the CRC of Child Rights Convention.
But the thing that happens basically most of those reports are being ignored because Israel is not respecting all the Geneva Convention or international law. They are actually not recognizing that the West Bank is under occupation.
So they can always manipulate international law and they can argue about that it does not apply it because international humanitarian law only applies to occupied people.
Press TV: There is a really, the idea here that an Israeli person will see a Palestinian child as a potential threat and therefore must be treated in a completely different way.
Rezeq: Actually it is an Israeli prosecutor who basically said every Palestinian child is seen as a potential terrorist and therefore it is legitimate to, or in their eyes it is legitimate to arrest 700 children every year and until this moment I think around 200 Palestinian children are arrested on a monthly basis and they are going through all this humiliation, interrogations, shackling and all types of torture, solitary confinement, isolation, bad treatment, denial of legal rights and medical rights but this will only change when the international community will just hold Israel accountable to the treaties they are signatory of, to the international law and other laws.
Otherwise all these consolidated work of the international organizations, involved human rights organizations will mean nothing without enforcement of law, it will mean nothing.
AHK/JR
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